Monday, November 28, 2011

I'm not saying that shopping on Black Friday means you're a dumb dummy, I'm just saying that of the people we know, the family who most feverishly pores through the ads--highlighting and circling and dog-earing pages, assigning different stores to each family member to maximize their manpower, slavering that "you can't afford NOT to go! they're giving stuff away!"--is the same family that declared bankruptcy a few years ago. That's all. I like a good bargain myself, and sometime during the weekend we always end up at Al's Sporting Goods to buy some shoes. But so far the Friday morning after Thanksgiving finds me doing the crossword and drinking hot chocolate with my kids at Grandma Maxine's kitchen table while John and Grandma do the sudoku, and I intend to keep it that way.

My grandma scoops the last shreds of the egg whites out of the shells with her fingers, because she once heard someone say that you get the equivalent of another egg's worth of whites for every dozen eggs when you do that. I know what you're thinking: She's nuts. That's what I thought at first, too; that she was wasting her time on something so dumb with so little return, but this is a woman who managed, as a divorced mother of seven children and full-time teacher, to not only hold on to a working cattle ranch, but to pay off the many tens of thousands of dollars of debt her former husband had gotten them into. So maybe she's not nuts. Maybe she's disciplined. Maybe she knows that the little things matter.

Probably the first step in an effective defense against child pornography charges is to shave off your mustache.

I support your right to not vaccinate your kids. I agree that there is some weird stuff in there, and it bugs me. I think there should be scrutiny and perhaps revision of the vaccine schedule, but I'm still going to be super pissed at you if one of my infant family members gets polio or measles.

I think a senior dog is the way to go for us.

They didn't come out and say it in words, but before my parents got a Wii my kids used to greatly prefer going to John's parents' house. Also there are cousins their age on John's side, cousins with whom they can fight with about whose turn it is to use the Wii and GameCube.

The basement is not as horrid as I thought, now that the shelves are out. I think we might be able to salvage it, if someone can come and replace the ducting.